Shelbyville police accused of illegally taping attorney-client talks

Shelbyville police illegally recorded a confidential meeting between a defendant and his attorney, then used the information to try to frame him for a crime, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Louisville.

In the lawsuit, attorneys for Enrique Gonzalez, 18, allege the department continuously recorded privileged conversations between suspects and their lawyers for six months last year.

Attorney-client conversations are supposed to be confidential — a concept considered among the most sacred under the law.

The complaint says recordings were made “24/7” at the department from late July 2017, when a company installed the equipment, until they were stopped in December.

“The mass recording of communication among defense counsel and their clients – without permission – is a widespread affront to the constitutional rights of defendants," the suit says.

The city hasn’t responded to the complaint, but in a brief interview, Shelbyville Police Chief Istvan Kovacs said only one conversation between a lawyer and client was recorded – the one between Gonzalez and his lawyer.

Kovacs said the recording was inadvertent and that no police officers listened to it or used it in their investigation of Gonzalez, who was charged with assault before the case against him was dismissed.

In an interview, Gonzalez, who goes by Ricky, said he is seeking justice and compensation for about two months he spent behind bars.

“Instead of them doing their job and getting down to the bottom of it, it was more like they had something out for me,” he said.

The lawsuit, filed by the Chicago law firm Loevy & Loevy, says that because of the defendants’ misconduct, Gonzalez was “ripped from everything he knew” during his senior year of high school and sent to a detention center in another county.

The case began on Oct. 26, 2017, when a man named Austin Monroe was attacked and hit in the face with a pistol.

According to the suit, Monroe told police Gonzalez was not his attacker and identified another suspect. But police nonetheless targeted Gonzalez, the complaint says.

Questioned the next day at the police department, Gonzalez maintained his innocence and invoked his right to counsel.

While Gonzalez and his lawyer engaged in a privileged conversation about the case, police officers “shockingly” recorded it, violating his constitutional rights, the suit says.

Responding last December to a motion to release Gonzalez from jail, Assistant Shelby County Attorney Melinda Zellersaid a “technical problem” caused audio recording in the interrogation room to remain on 24 hours a day.

She said the officers didn’t know the recording was continuing and that neither they nor the prosecution knew the tape had been made until Gonzalez’ lawyer, Amy Nicole Robertson, discovered it in the evidence turned over by the commonwealth.

In a Dec. 4 letter to Kovacs, the company that installed the video and audio taping equipment, Advanced Global Communications of Prospect, said that it erroneously continued to record audio after the video was turned off.

“We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused,” said Roger Teegarden, a company official.

But the lawsuit and one of Gonzalez’s lawyers, Elliot Slosar, provide a far different version of events.

The suit says the surreptitious recording was discovered when a second lawyer for Gonzalez arrived at the police station and saw Shelbyville police officer Bruce Gentry “listening to and watching Mr. Gonzalez’s privileged conversation with counsel.”

According to the complaint, police used the illegally recorded information to identify witnesses “in their effort to continue framing Mr. Gonzalez for a crime he did not commit.”

In an interview, Slosar said he will use the suit to try to determine how many other clients may have been recorded talking to their attorneys.

But Kovacs said Gonzalez was the only one. While acknowledging the taping, he said Gonzalez's lawyer was inadvertently allowed to see his client in the interrogation room, where defense attorneys normally are not permitted.

In additional to Gentry and Kovacs, the suit names as defendants the city of Shelbyville and police officers Nick Fiscante, Patrick Donahoe, Darvin Chesser, Jeff McClellan and William White. It alleges the defendants maliciously prosecuted Gonzalez and conspired to violate his constitutional rights.

Besides the taping, Gonzalez also alleges the defendants violated his rights by fabricating evidence and threatening witnesses to get them to implicate him.

It says police targeted him even though the victim said the perpetrator was a different race than Gonzalez and picked the man who attacked him from a lineup.

The complaint also alleges that another witness was threatened with a felony robbery charge that would result in him going to “big boy jail” if he didn’t implicate Gonzalez.

While charges against Gonzalez were dismissed, the suspect identified by the victim has never been charged, according to the suit and court records.